Since other reviewers have covered the contexts of this monumental book in detail, I guess I'll have to be content just to list a few of the most important ideas that I learned from reading it. 1) The whole command structure of the Confederate army in the West from Davis down, was ineffective, nearly hopeless, and this book chronicles its sad demise about as well as it can be chronicled. 2)Bragg, who got reasonably high grades for his impressive but ultimately pointless invasion of Kentucky, becomes a pathetic, bitter general in charge of a nearly mutinous army. The fact that Davis could not or would not replace him until after Chattanooga says volumes as to why the South ultimately lost the war. 3)Joe Johnston, who I always rather admired, becomes The General Who Always Ran Away. And Connelly proves it. Talk about a change of attitude. He also gets alot of the blame for failing to relieve Vicksburg. 4) The famous cavalry commanders like Wheeler, Hunt, and Forrest did little to nothing to stop Sherman from marching on Atlanta and are therefore completely overrated, despite their often specacular tactical successes. If you have to read one book on the Confederate effort in West, read this one. It's eye opening.

Connelly was one of the best western Civil War historians and the expert on the Army of Tennesse. This Army with so much promise in the heady days of Perryville and near success at Stone's River experiences a costly but hard won victory at Chickamaugua only to have the master of personal conflict General Bragg throw the lost opportunity away by having volitile arguments with his Generals. Bragg was a very good organizer but had conflicts with his leadership that caused a cabal to build asking for his ouster. Connelly captured all the conflicts that finally require Davis to hold a council with all the generals. Amazing that Davis asked all the leaders of the army to express their feelings about Bragg with him present and then keep Bragg on causing a rupture of command. Several generals are reasigned, Longstreet and Bragg don't get along causing a serious coordination loss while the seige of Chattanoga is in process. As a result Longstreet and 1/3 of the army is sent to east Tennesse while Grant's swollen forces wash away the Army of Tennesse and taking Bragg's command away. Connelly not only covers the poor condition of the confederate soldiers, great detail on the campaigns but also the political manuevering. Joe Johnston replaces Bragg but in turn he is undermineed by Hood's letters to Davis. The cautious Johnson is replaced by Hood outside of Atlanta resulting in frontal assaults that weaken the army severely losing Atlanta in the process. Hood tries to lure Sherman on a wild goose chase which Sherman gives up but then Hood oddly leaves Sherman in Georgia while he marches back to Tennesssee. As Connelly vividly writes, after a lost opportunity at Spring Hill, Hood retaliates against his command by ordering the destructive frointal assualts at Franklin. Connelly covers the weak attempt to capture Nashville, the army's virtual destruction and the story of the sad remnants moving to North Carolina in a valiant but pathetic attempt to stop Sherman. The all star command is made up of many of the lost generals of the Confederacy, Johnson, McLaws and even Bragg. Connelly gives you the full monty, the story of the Army and politics within. What would have been had Davis not been so hung up on Bragg and if Hardee had stepped forward to command.

In the sequel to Connelly's superb "Army of the Heartland", "Autumn of Glory" follows the Confederacy's largest Western army from 1862-1865. The work picks up after the Kentucky Campaign and deals with some of the more dramatic moments of the war in the West-Stone's River, Chickamauga, Chattanooga, The Atlanta Campaign, the 1864 Tennessee Campaign, and the surrender in North Carolina. Connelly's real gift is weaving the story of battles, conflict between army leaders, the political aspects of the war, and the story of the common soldier. He weaves everything together in a highly readable, entertaining book. I feel this book is superior to "Army of the Heartland" and the chapters on the Atlanta Campaign are truly great. This book, along with the previous volume, is the resource on the Army of Tennessee to this day and will most likely remain that way for a long time to come. It is no wonder that Civil War Times Magazine named this book on of the top 100 books on the Civil War.

Connelly wrote this excellent account of the first year of the Army of the Tennessee from the viewpoint of the high command and it is a very thorough and pretty damning one. Starting with the Tennessee militia, then on to Forts Henry and Donelson, then on to the surprise counterattacks at Shiloh and Corinth and Bragg's remarkable but pointless invasion of Kentucky in the fall of 1862, Connelly relentlessly describes and criticises the actions or inactions of the generals and shows how most of Tennessee was lost to the Union in a few months at comparitively little cost through the sheer incompetence of the Southern generalship. Polk, Floyd, Pillow, Albert Sidney Johnston, Beauregard, Kirby Smith, Van Dorn, Bragg, and especially Jefferson Davis all receive lashings at the hands of this historian, whose research and conclusions are impeccable and damn near irrefutable.

On the downside, the maps in this book are atrocious (but usable)and sometimes Connelly is rather ignorant about the Union Army. By staying in the command tent, Connelly ignores the story of the common soldier. The biggest flaw is that Connelly is so fierce in his criticisms of the Confederate high command that I found it hard to believe they did ANYTHING right.

Although Connelly wrote this book in the 1960s it remains the top book about the Army of Tennessee in 1861 and 1862. Much of this book deals with the formation of the army largely from the state army/militia of Tennessee, characters who helped form the army like Governor Isham Harris, and early leaders of the army such as Polk, A.S. Johnston, Bragg, E.K. Smith, and others. The book also delves into the strategies, policies, and politics of the army and the army's dealings with the Confederate government and President Jefferson Davis. Connelly also discsses topics that deal with the ineptitude of some early AOT leaders. Much of the discussion centers on these topics, but there is also discussion of early battles such as Shiloh, Richmond (KY), and Perrysville. I believe the second volume of Connelly's work on the AOT (Autumn of Glory) is superior to Army of the Heartland, but this is still a well-written, informative, and interesting look at the formation of the Confederacy's largest army in the Western Theater. It is not a surprise this book, and Autumn of Glory, was named one of the 100 essential Civil War titles by Civil War magazine.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the Civil War is the way in which strategy was determined not so much by military necessity as by the interplay of politics and personalities. While this is true of the Union, it seems to be more so of the South. In this slim volume, the authors take the reader through a study of the prevailing strategic thought (Napoleonic/Jominian) and then discuss how this thinking was applied by the major Southern Commanders. Their conclusions: Lee contributed little to the overall strategic thinking of the South; the commanders in the Western theater (Bragg, A.S. Johnston, Joseph Johnston, Beauregard, et al.) may have had a greater conception of the South's stategic requirements; and, Jefferson Davis was caught between the two. The result? Neither Virginia nor the Western theaters got the military treatment that was required for successful war.

Naturally, it is easy to oversimplify these conditions. Yet, the authors demonstrate that Lee, concentrating on the Virginia front, seemed unaware of the Western theater, resisted efforts to strengthen the West through transfers from the Army of Northern Virginia, and continually requested that the Western theater support his operations with either movements of their own or transfers of troops to Virginia. This criticism of Lee is always a touchy issue (see, Joseph Harsh, Confederate Tide Rising for a contrary position).To his credit, Davis resisted all of these requests and, on one occasion, overruled Lee to have Longstreet's corps sent to the West prior to the late 1863 battle of Chicamauga.

Davis, a Westerner himself (Mississippi) faced a formidible group in what the authors call the Western Concentration Bloc, a group united by family or geographical ties and a mutual hatred of Bragg. Among them, Connelly and Jones seem to think of P.G.T. Beauregard as the best of the strategic thinkers. Davis himself added to his own problems with the departmental system, a possibly unnecessary complication added to already complicated command problems.

The authors, having emphasized strategic thought in Chapter 1, do not demonstrate how those strategic theories were applied by the Southerners. Perhaps this is because these theories, in the purest sense, were never applied, except in the desire to concentrate forces, which may in fact have been a function more of theater jealousy rather than application of Jominian doctrine. The student of strategy, academic or armchair, might find a better discussion of this topic in Jones' Civil War Command and Strategy (1992). Even so, this is a well-written study with valuable insights, and certianly rates 5 stars.

Connelly and Bellows offer a fine selection of short essays that deal with the "mentality" of the Southern mind amid the squalor of a defeated nation. I would think those more versed in their Civil War studies would appreciate this more than the casual reader. An appetizing psychological look at the only section of our country that has been a "defeated nation"

This book should probably only get one star but I gave it two because it does give the reader a good look at Lee the man instead of the saint. The problem is that it goes too far. It is hard but possible to make a much loved figure human without going to the extreme Connelly goes to. A happy medium would have been much more likely to bring us the real Lee. Sadly instead of going after the real General Lee Connelly goes on the attack and gives us a picture of a sad person who does not reflect the real man. Was Robert E. Lee the pure figure he is often pictured as? Not likely. On the other hand he also was not the pathetic figure given us by Connelly. In an attempt to destroy the myths of the past Connelly creates a set of his own half truths and myths. Shame on him!

This book might be approached as an examination of how a well-known personality is transformed for a human being into a cultural icon. Sequentially and chronologically Connelly takes his readers through that process using Robert E. Lee as the item of investigation. Along the way, Connelly makes commentary on the differences between the cultures of the north and south and how Lee's legion spread because of those cultural differences. That context has been well-established by numerous writers. Connelly simply uses it for a closer examination of Lee. For example, on page 102 he quotes another historian, Bradley T. Johnson in writing "Environmental factors had forced North and South to develop contrasting socieites. The North, 'invigorated' by constant struggle with nature, became materialistic, grasping for wealth and power. The South's 'more generous climate' had wrought a life-style based upon non-materialism and adherence to a finer code of 'veracity and honor in man, chastity and fidelity in women'"
This book helps a person to understand how history evolves in the process of retelling over a period of several generations.

This book is not just a revisionist look at Robet E. Lee but also an objective evaluation of the Southern Lost Cause Syndrome that utilzed Lee as their flagship for a just cause. Thomas Connelly is a great writer of the western theater notably the history of the Army of the Tennessee and of the western Confederate cabal that had conflicts with Jefferson Davis. Connelly offers what southerners and partiucularly Virginians may find as a harsh evaluation of Lee during the war. This book also includes some psycho-analysis that offers some reasoning for Lee's very formal demeanor which is in far contrast's to Joe Johnston whose troops would pat him on the head on occasion but not dare approach Lee in such an informal manner. In my opinion the book demonstrates that Lee was simply not infallible like amy man who has overall responsibility, he must accept some of the blame for failure. There is also the question of whether Lee was too aggressive with limited manpower (Gary Gallagher has referred to this as crucial, that the Confederacy was in serious need of military victories for morale). The Lost Cause contingent made up of Jubal Early and company always gave Lee total credit for victory but not in defeat, Early & company always made someone other than Lee a scapegoat in their version of history. Gettysburg serves as the grand indictment of this philosophy where Longstreet becomes the total goat at Gettysburg in the 1870's while one of his accusers, Early, covers his own lackluster performance by publicly hanging Longstreet. Early raps himself with the cloak of Robert E. Lee to deflect criticism of his own actions and post war exile. To my mind, Connaly expolores better than anyone else the self serving relationship of Jubal Early to the Lost Cause syndrome in Early's attempt to rewite history. Connelly brings out that Jackson was the south's great hero until Lee's death and the emergence of Lee's rise among southern writers. He also argues that Lee lacked a national picture of how to best serve the Confederacy by his opposing transferring troops west to bolster those failing armies with limited resources. He argues that Virginia was Lee's first and main focus. Highly reccommend this book, whether you agree or not, Connelly makes you look at the facts presented and while not meaning to destroy Lee's image of a competent and charismatic general, it tends to show him as human and mortal who like everyone made some mistakes. We all have to look at historians presentations carefully, even Douglas Freeman in Lee's Lieutanents slightly diminishes Jackson's role and he makes Longstreet shorter, fatter and a plotter of self grandization. This is an intellectually challenging book best appreciated by those that have an open mind. This book most likely helped foster Alan Nolan's "Lee Considered."